Latest revision as of 15:55, 20 September 2006

[edit] Comments on Version 2 (11 Aug 2006) of "The History of Haskell"

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A note "(SLPJ: done)" means I have done something about the comment; thank you! I won't change the v2 Postscript, though, otherwise we'll all get confused.

(SLPJ: done; it was 1.1) BerniePope 04:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC) Possible contradiction. On page 5 it says "let" expressions appeared in Haskell 1.1 for the first time. Whereas, on page 20 it says: "The use of the function called "let" reflects the fact that "let" expressions were not in Haskell 1.0 (They appeared in Haskell 1.2)."

(SLPJ: I've changed it to say "...in a number of ways, especially its adoption of type classes". More details welcome) BerniePope 08:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC) Minor quibble. On page 42 it says that Mercury was influenced by Haskell in a number of ways, including its "syntax". I think that connection is tenuous at best. Indeed, the following web page makes a point of the fact that Haskell's and Mecury's syntaxes are different:
Comparing Mercury with Haskell

(SLPJ: done) EricWilligers 14:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC) Typo. page 16, column 1. "Programs like this are said to be embiguous" => "Programs like this are said to be ambiguous"

(SLPJ: done)EricWilligers 22:47, 20 August 2006 (UTC) Comment page 13, column 2. The symbol _|_ is introduced in section 5.4 without being explained, and isn't linked with the (more searchable) term "bottom" until section 5.5. A reader may form the impression that Haskell programs contain special non-ASCII characters. Thus introducing section 5.4 with some background information such as the following would allow sections 5.4 and 5.5 to be understood by a wider audience. "Expressions that fail to evaluate normally are considered to evaluate to bottom, _|_, a value that each type implicitly contains."

(SLPJ: done) Bulatz 18:06, 23 August 2006 (UTC) page 28 "Yale Haskell ... served as an excellent test-bad for new ideas." should be "test-bed"

Dagit 02:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC) lambdabot really should appear in the timeline since it is mentioned in the paper and has become a tool than many people use for teaching, learning and hacking haskell code.

(PLW:done)Benmos 19:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC) "page 5" - clarify difference between what happened in 1990 ("all further discussion about Haskell took place in public") and in 1999-2002 ("...discussion about the language was now held on the Haskell mailing list, open to all")

I remember a UK academic group that was setup to look at developing a new FP language in the late 80s. I can't remember the exact compostion of the "Language X" group, but othe UK FP guys involved included John Darlington, Chris Clack, Hugh Glaser, Phile Broughton, Tom Thomson, Paul Watson, Nic Holt and myself. I understood the reports from this group ot have somehow fed into the Haskell process. Was this the case. I can't find any references to it ~~~~.

You could probably do with some more references for Hope+ (and if you find some please let me know!), Hope+C - Hope+ with Continuations would be one obvious example I couldn't find reference too. Hope+ was of course an eager Language unlike he lazy Hope, although it had annotations available to dictate/guide alternative strictness strategies (there is a reference available for this) ~~~~.

Sorry, I am not certain my 4 tildes worked for my name and date. John Kewley (JK), j.kewley@dl.ac.uk (ex ICL), 20/09/2006